News

Lviv City Councilmen Want Jewish Group Investigated

(December 19, 2008)

Members of the far-right "Freedom" party on the Lviv, Ukraine city
council sent an official request to the prosecutor's office demanding
criminal charges against leaders of a local Jewish community
organization, according to a December 18, 2008 report posted on the
local news web site Zakhid.net. The document, replete with
antisemitic pejoratives, focuses on a November 3 screening of a film
about the Holocaust that focused on what happened to the Jews of Lviv,
the majority of whom were massacred by the Nazis with some help from
Ukrainian collaborators. It is the latter point that the far-right
city councilmen focused on, claiming that it inaccurately depicted
Ukrainians as playing an integral role in the extermination of the
Lviv Jewish community. Since the Chesed Arye organization distributed
the film to a Polish language school and other schools in the city,
the councilmen demanded criminal charges against that organization
based on laws prohibiting ethnic discrimination.